Fantasy Baseball Today - Launch Angle Changes, Early Season Trends & Slow Starts (4/19 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Alex Verdugo has raised his launch angle while Christian Yelich is hitting more ground balls (2:10). Shane McClanahan struck out a career-high nine batters on Monday. ... Revenge is a dish best served cold (13:30)! ... What do the early season trends say about the baseball (16:00)? ... Which hitters have underperformed and overperformed the most according to Statcast (23:16)? ... News and notes (32:20): we have updates on Mike Trout, Ronald Acuña and more. ... Brendan Rodgers, Joey Votto and others are off to very slow starts (36:25). ... Which hitters stood out on Monday (43:52)? ... What about the pitchers (46:45)? ... We wrap up with bullpens, streamers and Team Name Tuesday (56:22).  Fantasy Baseball Today' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Get 20% off Fantasy Baseball Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-baseball-today?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-baseball-collection Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Now here's Frank, Scott, and Chris. What's up and welcome in to Fantasy Baseball today on Tuesday, April 19th. Frank Stamphle joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. Today on the show, we're going to recap all of Monday's action,

but it was a light slate. So we'll also talk about early season trends, hitters that are off to slow starts. And we've got team named Tuesday. Thankfully, Chris is here because if anyone listened or watched last week, you know Scott and I, we're struggling. First and foremost, Chris, how are you doing, man?

It feels like it's been a while. How was softball? I had a good day today. We won 13 to 2. I went 4 for 4 with two walks, probably some friendly home cooking from the score. There were a couple of bad at times. balls that I don't know if the defense got a glove on them, but I kind of just

poked a couple of grounders between the third base and shortstop that, you know, maybe I don't know if they got a glove on it. It could have been an error, but officially goes in the scorebook as four for four with two walks. I don't think I've made an out this, this season, actually. Look at this guy. I don't want to, like, I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but I think we're three games in and I haven't made an out at the plate, which is pretty good.

Oh, that's not true. I got robbed. I got robbed on a diving catch down the line. It would have been a double otherwise. The luck evens out. The luck evens out. You get robbed. You get a couple seeing-eye singles.

Get ready. Get ready to see more of those next year, a post-shift world. Oh, right between short and third, we've got ourselves a modern-day Tony Gwynn and Chris Towers, crushing it in softball. Let's get into it. This time, we've got the I can't believe it player from Monday's action. I don't...

That's it. I don't believe what I just saw a player. Yeah, something like that. Anyway, Chris, because you corrected me, you don't get to go first, Scott gets to go first. That's fair.

That's 100% fair. All right, Scott. Who you got? All right. Well, there's not... There may be something actualable here. Alex Verdugo is who I want to highlight here today. Obviously, a light slate.

So I've got to be a little more creative with my pick here. But I've been wanted to talk about him. He was on base three times here on Monday and so far he's just been he's just been amazing

in a way that in a way that's maybe gone unnoticed so he already has three home runs from a guy who we don't expect big power production from but if he's able to sustain the bat of ball metrics he has so far then maybe

he can be a pretty good power source He's hit the ball hard. Okay, of course, obviously. His numbers are good. That pretty much demands you hit the ball hard at this stage of the season. But more than that, he has this highest fly ball rate by far. Normally, he's under 30% for fly ball rate. He's up over 40% in the early going.

So he's optimized his launch angle for power, which with the quality of contact he's making, has and, will contribute power if he's able to sustain it. Of course, he's a great plate discipline guy. He's struck out only three times this year so far. He's as many strikeouts, as many home runs as strikeouts. It's exactly the sort of changes you want to see Alex Verdugo make. And it's opening my eyes to,

it's a new possibilities for him. I would say, I don't know if I want to call him a bye-high, necessarily, if I'm to that point. I think it's easier to justify in a points league because the floor is already so high because of those contact skills from Verdugo. But I'm definitely interested in what he's doing. Yeah, I've noticed this as well.

The launch angle being up thus far for Alex Verdugo, the average launch angle for him this year is 12.3 degrees last year. That was 7.7. And Scott, as you mentioned, the fly ball rate way up for him, up over 40% thus far. Whereas for his career, he is at a 28% fly ball rate. Chris, are you buying these changes? It's like a super small sample size,

but if this is something that can sustain, then perhaps Alex Verdugo is a buy high candidate. What do you think, Chris? You are muted, sir. You know, I was unmuted and then I muted myself right before I said something. It's, if it's something that can sustain, yeah, it would be invaluable. But I just, I think of the sample size is too small to say that there's a shit. and skill set from a what, 26, 27 year old. Oh, he's only 25. 25. 26 in about a month.

I don't know. It's possible, but like he's had stretches where he's hit the ball in the air before, you know, over 10 games. So it's hard to buy it, but it's hard to buy into anything right now.

I mean, that's, you know, not to, I don't know, it's hard to do these podcasts every day because to a certain extent the answer to, nearly every non-injury thing that we see is it probably doesn't matter. So, yeah, my guess would be Alex Verdugo.

It probably doesn't matter. And I wouldn't buy him at an elevated cost. But, you know, I, I don't know. I think he's fine. I think he's Alex Verdugo probably. Yeah. I mean, for a lot of the players that we're talking about early on, you're right, Chris.

I mean, some of the stuff is not going to be actionable. It's smaller samples. But if I have Alex Verdugo on my team and I see what he's done thus far and hitting three home runs, and putting the ball in the air, then I feel good that he's on my team. And hopefully this can lead to a breakout season for Alex Verdugo. I mean, right, from an actionable perspective, Chris is right. I feel like I wouldn't buy him.

I wouldn't like if I had him on my team, I wouldn't be looking to sell him necessarily. But I wouldn't be like banging sound down someone's door with an offer to go get him. Sure. Obviously, breakthrough seasons have to start somewhere. and I think there are more signs of it from somebody like Verdugo than I don't know who else is off to a hot start somebody like Stephen Kwan is this the first name that came to my head

a name should immediately I would expect Alex Verdugo will be better than Stephen Kwan moving forward and if I could trade Stephen Kwan for Alex Verdugo I would do that that wasn't the point I was trying to make. Sure. I,

my point fizzled out clearly because I could example on the spot. Yeah, anyway, that's fine. All right. Well,

Chris, let's move on to your, whatever I called it. I don't believe at player of the day. I don't believe what I just saw. Actually,

I do believe what I just saw from Christian Yellich because I just wrote about him today on a piece on CBSports.com that was basically

just like 10 things that maybe don't matter but I'm optimistic. about. And with Christian Yowlich, it's mostly how hard he's been hitting the ball he entered today with a major league high 75% hard hit rate. Hard hit balls are 95 miles per hour. It doesn't matter where you hit them. And the issue for Christian Yalich entering today was that he was hitting too many balls on the ground, which was his issue last season. But the reason I was optimistic was mostly just, look, he's 86% on sprint speed, he's 87% on max, exit velocity, 86% on average X velocity. At the very least,

I think the concerns that the back injury was going to hinder him in a way that would like limit his skill set, I think those are looking unfounded. Now, maybe it's possible that the back injury last season makes it so he can't hit the ball in the air, but he's been hitting the ball really well so far this season. Yes, there's been too many ground balls, but he's first hit his first home run of the season today, 429 feet. He also had a 408 foot double the other day that he probably should have hit 410 feet if he wanted a home run because it was to the deepest part of the park. I think that same day he might have had a 388 foot or 404 foot double, something like that. Either way, I think there were signs that something was happening with Christian Yalach that he's

hitting the ball with authority. And that's a good thing. And especially because, you know, we've seen him turn those ground balls into fly balls or at least turn them into line drives. And at this point, I'm feeling pretty confident in Christian Alex that he's going to be good, probably very good. I don't think he's going to be the MVP level version of himself that he has been, but I'm not going to write it off entirely either because there's a lot of potentially elite things that he's doing right now with how hard he's hitting the ball. And so at the very least, I just feel very, very good about where Christian Yelich is right now. All right.

Gets on the board in style with his first home run on Monday. That being a grand slam that traveled 429 feet. Scott, I think it's been a mixed bag. Obviously, it's good that he's hitting the ball as hard as he is, Christian Yelich. But 28% strikeout rate, that's a little elevated. The launch angles down. So many ground balls. Do you have any early takeaways for Christian Yelch?

Pretty much the same as Chris. Yeah, I put in some offers for him. today even before the Grand Slam. And so now they're probably less likely to be accepted. But yeah, I feel good with where Christian Yelich is. I wish he was elevating a little better still. He, you know, that launch angle has, like a few days ago, it was up a lot higher than last year.

But that's the nature of it being so early in the season that it can fluctuate drastically from one day to the next. Yeah, it probably went up. up a decent amount today because his launch angles today were like 22 and 28 degrees. And he has 22 batted balls total. So it probably went up to like three degrees today. Because that's just where we're at right now. Well, we're past that.

Yeah. No, that's for sure, for sure. But yeah, I mean, based on what we can, what we can judge, that's 75% hard hit rate for Christian Yellich. Went up today. it went up today. It's higher now, but 75 was ridiculously high as it was. Yep, for sure.

And speaking of hard hits, man, we've got to get to my guy, Shane O. Mac. Here comes the money. Here we go. Money talks. Here comes the money. My man, Shane O'Mac,

made one mistake, but other than that, was great on Monday. He struck out a career high, nine batters over six innings. He allowed two runs. One of those was earned. Zero walks.

Love to see that. There's been a, at times his control has been a little bit shaky, but 13 swinging strikes in this start. Six of those came on the curve, three on the change, three on the slider. His fastball V-Lo, I do want to highlight, was down 1.6 miles per hour in this start. But when I was watching that game, they said the feels-like temperature there in Chicago was 28 degrees. So it was quite cold. Keep that in mind. He gave up a few hard hits, seven to be exact, including the home run that he gave up to Patrick Wisdom

off of his fastball. Chris, I know that you were a little bit skeptical on McClanahan coming into the season, but heading into this start, you know, after his first two starts, he was doing a better job limiting hard contact according to his stack cast page. What do you think so far about Jay McClanan? Yeah, it's funny. He had his best start of the season and got hit really, really hard in this to start. His average eggs of velocity was 94 miles per hour. His hard hits, he gave up seven of them, I believe, on 12 batted balls. But yeah, if you get nine, strikeouts in six innings, it's not going to matter. And so that's always been the case for Shane McClanahan, that he was going to get so many strikeouts that he was going to follow the,

you know, not as good as Robbie Ray was last season or Shane Bieber has been at his best, but that kind of profile where you can live with him getting hit hard if he's getting 30% strikeouts. Last season, he was 27%. So, you know, there was still some work to be done there. So yeah, I think it's a promising start so far. And, you know, hasn't answered all the questions that I had, but it would be impossible to do that in three starts. But I don't think you can be disappointed with what you've gotten from him so far. No, certainly not. Entering the start, he had an 18% swinging strike rate in the fastball velo was actually up in starts before this one.

So again, not much actionable here. There wasn't a ton going on. overall on Monday, but a nice start from Shane McClanahan. Again, career high, nine strikeouts for him. There was a very interesting revenge narrative that was at play on Monday. Freddie Freeman, Scott, how about this? First at bat against the Atlanta Braves, a home run. It's, man, you can't write this stuff. I mean, it was, I don't know. It was cool, I guess, to watch from like a pure baseball perspective. I don't know if it like stirred up some weird emotions inside of you. Oh, it doesn't take much to stir up my emotions on the Freddie Freeman front, Frank.

I was actively not tuning in to that game because I just, I don't think, I don't think I'm ready for it. But it's fitting, you know, it's fitting. So, nice to see him hit his first home run. I know there are probably some people out there who were a little worried about Freddie Freeman. Got off to a slow start last year much longer than just a couple weeks. and still ended up with MVP type numbers because he's Freddie Freeman and he's as consistent of a hitter as you'll find. And so he's got that first one on the board. And it was, I did see a highlight of it.

It went over, it went right over that 375 foot sign in left center, which is a reminder that Dodger Stadium has some close power alleys. You know, he might be able to take advantage of that a lot in his new. Yeah, I saw that home run would have only been out in five of 30 stadiums, including Dodger Stadium. So, you know, Yankees aren't the only ones who get freebies. Nice to see and also horrible to see. I'm sorry, Scott. Speaking of revenge, Tommy Fam returns to San Diego. And he is currently three for four with a double.

And he hit his first home run of the season. He needed a game like that because he was batting under 100, entering, Monday night, and he is 32% rostered. I don't think he's a must add by any means. But, you know, if someone dropped him in a five outfield of the league, you might want to go and pick Tommy fam back up. Your Don Alvarez, by the way. He made his return on Monday.

He was out of the lineup over the weekend. He was added to the COVID-I-L. He didn't test positive for COVID, but was dealing with some illness. And overall, he was awesome. On Monday, three-for-five with a double-dong. Both homers traveled 450. plus feet, and they weren't even his hardest hits.

He had a single that went 109.6 miles per hour off the bat as well. So welcome back. You're Don Alvarez. Let's take a look at some early season trends. This is something that I wanted to do, you know, a couple of weeks into the season and just kind of see, like, if there's any data available and learn what kind of ball they're using, if we know anything about that. And just so happened that Derek Cardi, who is the creator of the bat projections,

tweeted something out on Monday, which I think is, very helpful to this conversation. So so far, 2022 has the lowest home run rate over the past five seasons. And that is adjusted for weather, park factors, player quality, and the universal DH. So people might be wondering, oh, well, you know, it's still early in the season. It's cold. Derek Hardy added that at this point in the season, you kind of know what the home run rate is going to be. Like, it stabilizes a couple of weeks into the season. And again, it's adjusted for all these different things. But so far, Chris, it's 4.3%.

That's the home run rate. And that's the lowest it's been over the past five seasons. The actual home run rate is 3.8%. Yes. So it's even lower. So it's been adjusted up. Correct. Yeah.

And I don't, it's, look, it's possible that this is about the baseball that they're using, given that, you know, what we've seen over the past, what, six seasons now for major league baseball where they're, I mean, last season there were multiple different balls that were being used and nobody seemed to. to know which one was like. Well, there were, there were production problems related to COVID. So they were getting in old balls we came to find out after the season. So that has to be part of it is that they're more consistently used.

Potentially part of it. But it's also this was something that we talked about a little bit. But, you know, the humadors are being used consistently in every stadium now. I think entering this season, they were only used in about a third of them. And that was something that we learned maybe a week. and a half two weeks before the season was that humidors were going to be used in every baseball stadium. And when you think of the humidor, what you think of is course field and the effect that it's had to dead an offense there. But that's not necessarily the effect it would have everywhere.

It's also had that effect in Chase because it's made the ball more humid in Chase field. But, you know, one of the things that has been suggested is that in a place like Miami, it might increase offense because it's already a humid environment. A humidor would actually make the balls less humid. And thus, I don't know if it's less heavy or, but it would increase the, the coefficient of restitution or I don't know,

some sciencey thing that I'm not smart enough to understand. But basically it would make the balls bounceier. Yeah. And so, you know, what we might be seeing at this point is that it's a colder time of the year. And, you know, maybe it's a wetter time of the year. I don't actually know the effects.

But hopefully somebody smart will break this thing down in a way that I can understand. But right now, I think you can say that offense is down, in a way that is concerning, I guess. I don't know. It's weird. Yeah. It's a weird spot to be there. I haven't looked into like Babit because remember last April was just a disastrous month for offense. and Babbitt in particular had dropped quite a bit.

So specifically home runs is what we're focused on here. I don't know if it applies to offense in general. I haven't sensed that hitters are performing as horribly on the whole as they did last April. Babbitt is identical to last April, 283. So. Okay, interesting. Low Babbitt. Yeah, I mean, what I don't know, what I wrote down, Chris, I don't know, you can correct me,

I'm wrong, but I had, I looked at the first 11 days of the season from last year and it was 288, the Babbat. Okay. And then so far, I just looked in April just now. It's been 283. Home run to fly ball ratio for what it's worth. The first 11 days of the season last year was 13.6%. So far this year, it's 10.5%. So that is quite a bit of a difference.

Three percentage points thus far. And the same thing was confirmed by Max Freeze. I encourage everyone to follow them on Twitter at Freeze. and home run per barrel percentage. So how often a barreled ball goes out as a home run is down about nine percentage points compared to the first 11 days of the season last year as well. The average distance on those barrels

is also down four feet compared to last year. So the early takeaways are, I think that they might just be universally using the dead and ball of us to this point in the season. And as a result, we're seeing power down a little bit. And overall, just offense, because it seems like there are very extreme outliers both ways. There's some hitters who are off to tremendous starts hitting, like for very high batting average. And then ones that are just dreadful thus far.

And we'll talk about a few. Outliers are outliers. You know, like that's kind of the, you don't, I don't know if you learn much from outliers. You learn from the league wide trends. There's like, you can have, I guess, outside of like, 1968 when I think the batting average, title winner was like 301 or something most seasons you have someone hit 320 even in bad offensive environment so you know the outliers you don't learn as much from those as you learn from taking a holistic look and obviously it's still early so you can't take too much out of it

but yeah i i haven't i haven't had occasion to like freak out about about anyone yet because he's hitting 150 you know maybe toward the end of april i might start to get there if somebody's hitting 150. But, you know, I do wonder like, you know, I mentioned Christian Yelch had that 408 foot double the other day. That's a situation where maybe that's a home run. That's probably a home run in a more conducive offensive environment. And, you know, that 10.5% home run to fly ball rate, that is more indicative of what we saw in the early 2000s. You know, I remember home run to fly ball rate being something that like, if you were at 15%, that was pretty good. It wasn't elite, but it was pretty good.

in 2019, 15% was average. 2020 was average. Last season was 14% was average, 13.6%. So, you know, it's the kind of thing where it's, it's an early trend to keep an eye on. We don't necessarily know, you know, what this is going to mean moving forward. But, and obviously, I think trying to predict

what it's going to mean for individual players is kind of a fool's errand, or a fool's errand, if you will. Um, but, you know, it's, it's something that's worth watching right now. And I, but I don't think this is why Joey Votto has been bad, you know. Joey Votto. To name one specific player. I, I'm going to get to him.

I was watching the Reds and Padres game. And the broadcast was talking about how he's already switched up his batting stands like two or three times this season where he was closed off early on. He was trying to hit for power. Now he's opened up a little bit and he's trying to make more contact. And then he goes, he strikes out a few more times. tonight. We'll get to him in just a little bit. These are the biggest under and overachievers

according to Stackcast. Now, I'm not sure we can take much away from this. Again, it's so early on, but it might help fantasy managers feel better, or potentially worse, about these players. So underachievers, these are players with the biggest difference between their batting average, their actual

batting average, and their expected batting average based on how hard they hit the ball, launch angle, trajectory, etc. So far, Kyle Tucker is hitting 121 with a 308 XBA Luis Robert 194. That's 342. XBA. Uridan Alvarez was hitting 200 entering tonight. Goes out has a monster game. His XBA was 331. Eddie Rosario, 0.034. That is correct. That is his batting average. His XBA is 162. So let's go Eddie Rosario. Pick it up. Being a big underachiever does not

necessarily mean that you're, that you deserve much better results. Correct. And then Jesse Winker is another one on this list, 152 batting average with a 274 XBA. Scott, again, I don't know how much is actionable or you could take away from this, but again, like Kyle Tucker got off to a slow start last year and then he turned it around. We were telling everyone, please go buy,

buy, buy if you pay. Well, it's similar to this where the underlying numbers look great, even though he was that actual results were horrible. So, you know, that advice goes doubled this year since we've already seen him pull out of it in this exact same way.

But, I mean, honestly, my opinion hasn't changed for any of these players. If you have one that Frank just listed and you're frustrated with how they perform so far, this is encouraging, I guess, except in the case of Eddie Rosario. I would drop Eddie Rosario, but I think he was like in a three team, three outfielder league, I would drop Eddie Rosario. But he was fringy to begin with. So it's the kind of thing where two bad weeks can make him dropable anyway. It makes them dropable because in that sort of. league, you know nobody's going to add him mainly. While he's not hitting, especially.

I want to say, I still want to say my opinion of him has actually changed. It's just you know, he was kind of fringy to begin with, as you said, and you'll have another chance at him. One thing I will point out with these stats is one, Kyle Tucker's expected Woba is almost double

his Wobah. His Wobus 227, his expected Wobo's 436, that's fun. The other thing I would point out in a more useful way, hopefully, would be that at this point in the season, given the trends that we've seen with home runs and the ball not traveling as far, you should expect more players to be underperforming their Wobah, their expected Wobah and their expected stats in general than you normally would. Because if the ball is not traveling as far, the expected Wobah that is calculated based on historic data. And so if the ball is traveling differently, a ball hit 95 miles per hour with a 15 degree launch angle will not

travel the same way that it would have in the past. And so the expected numbers on that have to change. And so what you'll probably see from statcast and from baseball savant.com is at some point a recalibration of those expected numbers based on once there's a big enough sample size, we'll see a bit of a recalibration of those I would expect in season two more accurately. reflect the offensive environment that we're seeing. And so I believe league-wide expected Wobah is lower, or league-wide Wobah is lower relative to expected Wobah than any point, any other April over the last five years is what I saw someone say.

That's partially a result of expected Wobah being calibrated to what we should, I think, assume is a different offensive environment than we're currently playing. If anyone wants to find these numbers and underlying statistics, Baseball savant.com is where you can find all of the statcast data. One closing point on Eddie Rosario as the leader of his fan club. He has been awful in his career in March and April. 227 batting average, 675 OPS. Those are by far the lowest batting average in OPS by month in his career.

So I guess he usually gets off to slow starts. Keep that in mind. Other notable names in the top 30 underachievers thus far, Tommy Pham was one of them entering Monday. Max Kepler, Jamer-Candallario, Gleber Torres, Whitmerryfield, Jose Abraeu, Mitch Hanager, and Joe Adel. A few overachievers thus far. Owen Miller batting 500, 327XBA. That's still very, very good for him. Miles, I mean, that's the kind of thing. If you're hitting 500, you're overachieving. It doesn't, that you can have a, you, if you're hitting that high, if you've got a zero ERA, you've

gotten lucky. You know, like, that's, that's just true. Even, it doesn't really matter. Owen Miller still looked really good so far. Oh, yeah. The math of baseball doesn't allow anyone to hit 500. That's basically what's that saying. And conversely, it's really hard to hit 034 in the case of Eddie Rosario. And the math of baseball doesn't really allow for that unless you strike out every time. Owen Miller, by the way, I saw an article earlier on Monday that he worked on a bunch of different things with his batting stance and mechanics in the all season. So that's partially why we're seeing these results

early on. Yeah, for sure. I added him in TGFBI. Yeah, he was one of the most added hitters this weekend. I think he's up to 65% roster down and makes sense to me. His teammate Miles Straw batting 333. That's with a 204XBA. Sayas Suzuki hitting 385

268 is the expected batting average. Don't go trying to sell high on Sayas Suzuki. I think he might be awesome. Jose Ramirez is hitting 4.5. 57, that's what of 349 XBA. Jazz Chisholm is hitting 318 with a 222 expected batting average. Scott, I guess it probably, maybe it doesn't bring you joy. I don't know if you want to see someone like Jazz Chisholm fail,

but he's someone you had on your bus list. And so far these numbers, bear it out that he's been lucky. Well, I would say that, you know, you call these the biggest overachievers and just a pure numeric sense, but the ones who actually have a bad, bad XBA, are the ones I'm most skeptical of, even before you told me these numbers, and that's Miles Straw and Jazz Chisholm. You mentioned Saya Suzuki.

What you didn't mention is his ex-slug, which is 7-18. I think he's slugging over 800 overall, is what I saw earlier? Yeah, well... I'll check back in on that, but... I don't... Without using today's stats, he's slugging over 900.

He's doing everything well, right? now. Like, he's striking out a little bit more than you want to see. But like, on the whole, Sayas Suzuki's done everything he possibly could to answer the question of whether he's, he belongs. He is slugging 929 as of Monday. So, uh, that's pretty good. Pretty good for, uh, for Sayas Suzuki there. A few other notable names, which I saw in terms of overachievers thus far. Can Brian Hayes, Freddie Freeman, uh, Randall Gritchuk, Ian Hap, Chris. Brian. Again, doesn't mean that you have to go out and try and sell these guys, but just to keep that in mind that so far, that is what Stackcast is telling us. Let's hit a quick break.

But first, join our Facebook group. If you haven't already, just go to Facebook.com slash groups slash fantasy baseball today. And you can join our community, people asking questions all the time, waiver wire, trades, and just discussing it, having fun. People are throwing memes in there. They're making fun of me. It's great. So so far, it's been awesome this season. Again, that's Facebook com slash groups slash fantasy baseball today. We're going to take a quick break and we'll return right after this. All right, so let's get into some news and notes. Bryce Harper will DH all three games in the series against the Rockies as he's nursing a sore

right elbow. The injury doesn't affect him while batting, but apparently it does when throwing. The MRI for Mike Trout's hand confirmed he did not suffer a fracture when getting hit by a pitch on Sunday. He remained out of the lineup on Monday and is dated. day. The Braves have tentatively targeted May for, I believe it was May 6th for Ronald Le Cunia's season debut. He's expected to begin a rehab assignment with AAA on Tuesday. Scott, this doesn't really, this doesn't line up for me.

Yeah, I would take it. It doesn't line up. Are they going to keep them in the minors for two and a half weeks? I get that they're trying to like play it safe, but it just doesn't make sense. It's a spring training basically, right? Like that's given that he's been playing in simulated games for like a week that that that comes out to roughly a this spring training at least but but i'm with you that like if he's if he's on day four he's tearing the cover off the ball by day seven he's probably they're probably activating him because why not now we've seen ronald like this is i think this has happened more than once he like strikes out every other bat for like the first two weeks of spring training and it like

Like, he's been a guy who's kind of slow to get the ball rolling historically. You know, that might happen too. But, yeah, there comes a point, especially now that the DH is available, if, you know, they don't want to necessarily have him in the outfield every day. They don't have to. If he's hitting, like, he can help because they're trying to win. For Jose Al-Tuvie, he exited Monday's game with a strain left hamstring. They're calling him day-to-day.

so we'll pay close attention there. Unfortunately, if you play in a weekly lineup league, I'm not sure how much more you'll get out of Altuve this week. Wanda Franco was scratched from Monday's game with a tight quad. They said he's expected back on Tuesday. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said that Byron Buxton is, quote, very optimistic about how he's feeling right now. Chris, you weren't on yesterday.

Do you have any quick thoughts on Byron Bucson and his injury? Honestly, like, I basically, basically took the rest of the day off after he got hurt on Friday. Like I finished writing my second article of the day and I probably, I could have written one more. And like I hit submit right as he like slid into second base and I looked over and I saw him slam his hand. And I was like, like my mood just soured. So I hope he's, I'm glad nothing serious happened. I hope he's back soon.

I agree. Baseball is just much better when Byron Buckson is healthy. Astros GM James Click said Monday that Ryan Presley is, quote, feeling great and is expected back very, very soon. Hmm. All right. Six Oakland A's landed on the COVID IL Monday, which included Lutrovino, A.J. Puck and Chad Pinder, among others. Perfect timing as I picked up Chad Pinder in my main event league, and he's in the lineup. Don't have another option. John Gray will be activated from the IL Tuesday to start against the Mariners.

Lance McCullors was transferred to the 60-day IL because, of that forearm injury he suffered last postseason. Nick Sanzel was activated from the COVID IL while Tyler Naquin was sent to the COVID IL. Jonathan India won't rejoin the Reds lineup until at least Friday as he's dealing with that hamstring injury. Anthony Rendon. I don't understand. Yeah.

I mean, they could have put him on the IL right away. Yeah. I don't understand. It's the Reds. I mean, they do a lot of things that I'm sure they don't even understand. Anthony Rendon was scratched from Monday's lineup. with a stomach bug, and three games were postponed due to weather on Monday. The White Sox Guardians, the Diamondbacks Nationals, and the Giants and the Mets.

Unfortunately, we had to wait one more day to watch the Baby Goat, Tyler McGill, get back on the mound. What is up with these guys? I'll alternate players so that we can get through this rather quickly and recap Monday's action. But, Scott, we're getting a lot of questions about Brendan Rogers, someone you liked coming into the season. He went one for three with a walk on Monday. He's batting 118. anything that stands out in the profile early on for Brendan Rogers. I mean, everything looks bad.

Right. But I'm not ready to change my opinion based on that. I think he's just had a bad couple weeks. And scanning ahead to every name on this list, that's basically going to be my take for all of them. So I know that's boring, but I think it's the most prudent course to take. For Brendan Rogers specifically,

I remember I read something on Baseball America in spring training, toward the end of spring training, where baseball America primarily deals with prospects, and they have a lot of relationships with scouts and whatnot. And they were asking which players have really stood out in spring training. And a lot of the ones they talked about were prospects. But Brendan Rogers was on that list too. Like a lot of scouts liked what they were seeing from

and thought he was about to take a big step forward. And I don't think, of course, I liked him even before reading that. but that's just more reason to not let, you know, less than two weeks of data sway you. All right, Joey Votto went 0 for four with two more strikeouts on Monday. He's batting 105. Chris, this one's a little bit different because Votto is 38 years old, so it just kind of feels like it could fall off at any point.

I don't know. What do you think about Joey Votto? He's using a weird bat. That's true. Now, you guys have seen his bat. I thought it broke. Maybe he has more than one. I would assume he has more than one.

But he's got a bat with like a, it's like a hockey puck on the end of it. I don't know. He's constantly tinkering. And that's who Joey Votto is. And he was bad through the first 10 games of last season as well. And I don't know. Yeah,

I'm not worried. Like it's entirely possible. Joey Votto just is done. But that would be like the fifth time that I've said those exact words over the past four seasons probably. And it hasn't been true yet. So I'm inclined to believe that it's not true. And you tweeted out this stat that I thought was worth,

that kind of makes the point. Through 11 games last season, Joey Votto's slash line was 178, 213 and 311. And you see the year he went on to have. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, he had a 981 OPS from the 12th game on. And he also, during that stretch, that 120 games or whatever it was, because he missed some time, he had another 11 game stretch where he had like a 500 OPS.

These things just happen. Yep. You know, I'm inclined to give Joey Votto lots and lots of benefits of the doubt. Yeah. The biggest reason we're doing this is probably just to calm everyone down. Because a lot of people are just freaking out right now about their players. And I get it. You want to see your team perform well early.

So, I mean, it's only natural that you'll feel this way. There was professional athletes by their nature are not particularly great at accurately assessing their skill set a lot of the times. You don't become Joey Votto. To get to the major leagues, you kind of have to have an inflated sense of self-worth to a certain extent. But I think Joey Votto is one of the guys who seems to have a pretty good sense of who he is. is at all times. And I remember a quote from him this off-season where he was talking about like reinventing himself as a power hitter last season.

And I think he said something like, if I couldn't have done that, I would have retired. So like, yeah, I think Joey Votto's going to be fine. All right. So I'm just going to couple all these players together. And you guys just let me know if you're actually worried about any of them. Marcus Semi and Carlos Correa, Kyle Swarber, the Beefcake. Another offer on Monday in course field, too, man. He's betting 125.

And then Luke Voight went over as, well, I believe, I'll pull that up, but he was batting 167. Scott, anything worrisome here? Semyon, Karea, Schwarber, Luke Voight. Well, I think the one people might expect me to worry about is Marcus Simeon, since I had him as a bust candidate for as long as we were talking about it, basically. And, I mean, this could be that playing out, but I'm not ready to say it is because it's much more. likely to just be a slow start.

And in fact, I was actually going through in some leagues trying to make some offers on early season underachievers who people may be panicking on because I was receiving some offers in leagues that I was accepting. And I thought, well, you know what? Maybe I should be proposing these deals too. And Marcus Simeon was a name I gravitated toward. I, as somebody, not hoping to get him at a discount is what I was trying to do because I wouldn't want to pay probably what they drafted him for because I had him on my bus list.

But if I can get him for 75 cents on the dollar, I'm happy to do it. And you could conceive of a world in which Marcus Simeon is especially impacted by a ball that travels five feet less on barrels or whatever. But like, you would have also expected that to be the case. when that happened last season. And he had a 40 homer season. So, I don't know. Like, his max exezylo is 108.1 miles per hour.

Last year, it was 109.5. Most seasons, it's right around 108. So I don't, like, the fact that he's still capable of hitting a ball that hard makes me think that he's fine, physically at least. What I've noticed with Marcus Semiun is he's got a 61% fly ball rate early on in the season. So I think he might be trying too hard to hit for power. and maybe that's what's driving the low Babbib. He's not striking out or anything crazy,

so I think he'll be all right as those bad at ball metrics kind of normalized throughout the season. Carlos Correa actually is crushing the ball right now. He's just striking out way too much, 39%. So I would love to buy low on Carlos Correa if anyone is selling. Kyle Schwerber and Luke Voight in particular, the batter balls for them are just kind of wacky right now,

too many ground balls for both of them, lots of infield fly balls as well. So those two things in conjunction are just going to absolutely crush Babib for those slugger types. So Schwerber and Voigt, I think as they get closer to the players, they've been the past couple of years,

they should be fine as well. The thing I would say about Voight, I think in particular among this list, he's probably the only one who's really at risk of this. And I would also add that with the underachievers list with, I don't know, I don't know,

maybe someone like Labor Torres or Joe Adele who were on the underachievers list is like the only reason I would really be concerned about it right now is for the potential of them losing playing time. And I don't think that's going to happen with Luke Voight, but it's possible. So that would really be just that a slow start, you know, with Joe Adela especially. You know, I do think he's underachieving, but it's also possible that like a slow start and underachieving costs him playing time.

All right. Let's get to some hitting standouts from Monday. Say, Suzuki. We mentioned the name. He went two for three. He now has a nine-game hitting streak, which tied the longest hit streak to begin in MLB career

by a Cubs player over the last 100 seasons. Say Suzuki might just be a superstar, as I mentioned, on yesterday's podcast. Mani Machado, he's in Fuego. He got off to a slow start, you know, the first three or four games. Now he has got going.

Three for four with a double, hit his second home run of the season on Monday. You let me know if you guys are looking to add these players anywhere. Nick Madrigal went two for four. He now has eight hits over his last four games and he's batted either first or second in the lineup in each of those four games. He's 34% rostered. Josh Lowe with the Tampa Bay raise, two for four with a run scored RBI, his first career stolen base. He's striking out a lot, but I think some people might be dropping him because the roster rate

down to 48%. The other name on this list, probably for deeper leagues, well, definitely for deeper leagues, Diego Castillo with the pirates, not the Mariners. He went two for four. He hit his first career home run. He's only 11% rostered, and he's hitting the ball pretty hard early on. So, Scott, Nick Madrigal, Josh Lowe, Diego Castillo, looking to add them anywhere. I mean, Josh Lowe is the most interesting. I understand why he's been dropped until he gets hot. It's really hard to roster him in a three outfielder league. But in all five outfielder leagues, he should be rostered. He's hit the ball well. He's, drawn walks. He's played a lot more regularly than I thought he would with the

Rays. And I actually had him among the top 10 sleeper hitters for this week. So it's nice to see that at least through Monday that's gone well. I have almost no interest in Nick Madrigal because if power is going to be in short supply, shorter supply this year, I'm using this time of year to accumulate as much of it as I can. And you know your guy gets zero from Madrigal. And I don't think he's going to steal bases. His sprint speed is down to 65th percentile. And he's stolen three in his career. So, yeah, I don't know if this is a hot take.

But if I was looking for a middle infielder right now, I'd rather have Tyler Ward. Taylor Wade, sorry. Tyler Wade, Tyler Wade. Yeah, okay. He's been playing more with the injury. He's been playing pretty much. Yeah. And he's got two steals and four stolen base attempts.

So I'd rather or Jorge Mateo who's widely available. Sure. Yep. I think those are both names to target there. Madrigal, speaking of David Fletcher, just mentioned him that he feels very David Fletcher-esque. So good bat to ball skills. He doesn't strike out, but doesn't really offer much else. He stole 15 bases last season.

Yeah. I'm not even sure Madrigal is going to do that. No, that's a good point. Let's, uh, let's hit on some pitchers from Monday quickly here. Again, we'll alternate. Scott, Kyle Hendricks, another mixed bag. against Tampa Bay on Monday. Four and a third, two runs, six strikeouts.

He had 13 swinging strikes. The change-up looks awesome. The problem is he threw it a bunch in his first start, and he hasn't really relied on it as much as we'd like to see since then. Yeah, I mean, I'd still overall take this as an encouraging start. The walks have been a little high by Kyle Hendrick's standards in the early going, but, like, control is one of the main things he's known for, so I'm not really concerned about that.

I wish he had gone more than four in a third innings, but I'm not really even considering dropping up at this point. Two of his first three starts, he's looked good. Would you consider it for those names that we've been talking about recently? I don't know if any of them are still available, but... No, I mean... Like Heaney or Nestor Cortez. Yeah.

Heaney. Cortez, probably two. Because if you're in the kind of league where Heaney and Cortez are available, it's obviously shallow. And I think you can't... you can afford to be much pickier about the kind of starting pitchers you roster, if that's the case. I'm not like eager to drop Hendricks.

If that's the only way I can get an Andrew Heaney, then sure. Heaney has more upside. But yeah, I'd rather hold on to Hendrix if I can. All right, Chris, you get Eric Lauer, who had a strong start versus the Pirates, but it was the Pirates. Six innings, one run, five strikeouts. He had 13 swinging strikes. I did notice that his fastball velocity is up about a tick so far.

in the season. Any quick thoughts on Eric Lauer? I don't want to say there's nothing there. I mean, he's a, he's a lefty who's throwing like 95 miles per hour right now, which is, you know, pretty impressive. But on the whole, I'm not terribly excited about him. I think he's probably league average-ish pitcher, maybe a little bit better. But yeah, I mean, if the if the fastball velo is indicative of, you know, a potential skills increase, then, you know, he's, he's interesting.

Yeah, he does throw like four or five different pitches. And I, I just kind of blindly like to trust the Milwaukee Brewers because they've done a great job with pitching development. So it's against the pirates, but let's, let's fall in velocity. None of those pitches were good swing and miss pitches last season. So, you know, his best whiff rate on any pitch was his slider, which was 27.8%, which for a slider is pretty bad. So, you know, that's the basis of my skepticism. All right.

Luis Garcia was okay at home against the Angels. Five and two thirds, three runs, seven strikeouts to one walk. And another one, Scott, where the velocity has been up so far. 1.7 miles per hour. The fastball is up compared to last year for Luis Garcia. What have you seen from him? Yeah. I mean, that would certainly elevate the upside.

or at least the perceived upside for Luis Garcia. And neither of his starts have been that great with that increased velocity. It's worth noting. But he was good enough as a rookie last year that I wouldn't obsess over performance just yet, especially since the velocity is up rather than down. So yeah, I mean, he's fine.

All right. Aaron Ola survived Cor's Field on Monday. He went five and a three. a third, he gave up two runs, four strikeouts, and Chris, he did it with a heavy sinker approach. So maybe pitching more to contact just to get things back on track here. What do you think about to start for Aranola and course field? Yeah, I don't know if a heavy sinker, more contact-oriented approach is the kind of thing you want with the Phillies offense behind you most of the time.

But I guess for course field, it might work. And, you know, I, it's hard because the fastball has been, you know, not great for Aaron Nola at times over the past few seasons, especially last season. So, you know, it's fair to wonder if using a sinker more often in lieu of the four-seem fastball might not be a change worth considering. But, you know, historically, his sinker hasn't been that much better than his four-seem fastball. So I don't know if that would be a change worth making, especially with the Phillies defense behind him. But my guess is it was.

just a one start thing. Ranking pitchers right now, I don't know if you guys have updated your rankings yet this week. I was touching them up on Monday, and there's like a top five or six, and then after you get past those guys, it is just up for grabs. I think I moved Justin Verlander up to my seventh rank starting pitcher

just because there's nobody else. There's no one else that I trust. It's like Bieber, Beaver, Zach Wheeler, Nola. No. Peek behind the curtain. Tuesday is my big rankings update day. Not that I never adjusted in between,

but that's when I make wholesale changes. And I could see doing that with Verlander, too. Yeah. Let's go, Scottie. Let's get back to Monday. Nicolodolo, he racked up some whiffs at the Padres. Overall, the results weren't... Again, it was a mixed bag.

It was five innings, three runs, eight strikeouts, 16 swinging strikes. Scott, I think this is enough for me to hold on to Nicolaolo if I was someone thinking about dropping him. Yeah, I mean, we can't keep be calm. He's going to stick around. They're about to get some pitchers back. But until they actually send him down, I agree that this was more encouraging than not.

The results could have been better. They weren't bad. But, yeah, 16 swinging strikes on 90 pitches. And especially the way he got those 16 swinging strikes, six on the sinker, seven on the change up, three on the curve ball. That is definitely what you like to see. And he has a 57% ground ball rate through two starts. This is Nicola Dolos.

So if he's getting whiffs and ground balls, that is a perfect combination. That's exactly what you want to see. Sean Maniah, strong again against the Cincinnati Reds, six innings, one run, six strikeouts. He had 15 swinging strikes on 78 pitches. And Chris, he has now turned in a quality start in each of his first three Padres starts. This is Sean Mania. Yeah, I'm not sure there's anything to not worth. about either this game or his start so far.

I think we're seeing the good version of Sean Mania, but I don't think it's necessarily indicative of a gigantic change in his underlying skill set. You know, it's not, his velocity's not harder. He's not throwing a different pitch mix, really. So I think we're seeing a good stretch from Sean Mania, but I haven't exactly been motivated to move him up, independent of other pitchers moving down.

Same. Yeah, I liked Shawman and I quite a bit and I have a lot of shares but there's nothing that really stands out. The fastball velo is 90.4 miles per hour this year and part of the reason I liked him so much is he was around 92 last season. So honestly

it's actually a little bit discouraging where his velocity has been. Last one here Frankie Montas turns in a quality start as well against the Orioles six innings one run, five strikeouts and Scott so far the splitter usage is up even more now than it was over the second half of last season.

Yeah, it's good to see that he has that much confidence in it. Hasn't really been piling up withs with it like he did down the stretch last season. But, you know, well, there's obviously no reason to be disappointed in Montas to this point. Cody Bellinger just hit his second home run of the season. So I wrote that piece that I talked about earlier that I referenced, you know, the looking for positive signs or 10 positive signs. And, you know, the lead of that was feeling, you know, somewhat positive about Cody Bellinger, or at least having reasons to be positive about him over the past five days.

He's had his, I would say, best game of the season so far. He's had four batted balls of at least 89 miles per hour, three of them hard hit and a home run and a double. That's a great sign. I mean, Cody Bellinger's hitting the ball hard over the last week, which is not a thing he had done. far really at all last season or this season before that. So, you know, hard as hip ball of the season, 107 miles per hour. We'll take that. Um, low key, he's betting 278 now. Still striking out quite a bit, 29%. So you want to see that come down, but making harder contact, good signs for Cody Bellinger. Um, there were a few other

pitchers here I wanted to mention. Might be available in some deeper leagues. Uh, just quickly, Dylan Bundy, five and a third. He gave up one run, six strikeouts against the Red Sox. And then Chad Cool. It's a good start, but I don't know how much we trusted. Six shutout innings with four strikeouts against the Phillies. Chris, anything here, Dylan Bundy or Chad Cool? No, I don't think so. I mean, it's possible that Bundy has found some way to be effective

while averaging like 89 miles per hour with his fastball. But given his track record, I would run away from that as fast as I can. Yeah, he gave up 10 hard hit. balls in the start against the Boston. There's a four-home-run game coming. Yeah. All right. So good starts, but not necessarily trusting it there.

The call to the bullpen for the Cubs, David Robertson walked one in a one-run game, but converted his fourth save of the season. For the Rockies, Alex Colomey picked up his first save with Daniel Bard pitching on Friday and Saturday. Overall, Daniel Bard has been used a lot already this season, so I think it made sense to give him a day off. For the Padres, Taylor Rogers picked up his fifth save,

and then for the twins, I just wanted to note that Yon Duran pitched in the seventh inning up four to one at the time. He gave up a run and then Emilio Pagan was warming up in the eighth inning and then Minnesota broke it open. So just still trying to learn the usage

of this twins bullpen. We haven't, I don't think we've seen a traditional save opportunity yet since they traded Taylor Rogers, but Paghan was getting ready to pitch in the eighth. Maybe that was setting up Tyler Duffy for the ninth. Didn't we see one from Duffy? I don't think he converted it.

But I think he did get a... You might be right. There might have been a save opportunity in there. I know that there hasn't been a traditional save converted yet, so... Yeah. Maybe that's it. But we'll follow and let you know what happens here. To stream or not to stream for...

We'll start with Monday. No, today is Monday when we're recording. We'll go to Tuesday. Madison Bumgarner at the Nationals. Justin Steele versus the Tampa Bay Rays. Chris Archer at the Royals. Carlos Hernandez versus the Twins and Raver San Martín at the Padres. Scott, it appears that we have lost Merrill Kelly for some reason.

The Diamondbacks have a double-headed, and he wasn't listed for either of those. I don't know why. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. The game got postponed today. So I don't know why he wouldn't start on Tuesday. Assuming he is starting on Tuesday, he's my favorite pick. But since he's not showing up as starting as of right now,

I really don't want anyone else. Chris Archer at Kansas City is probably, if you're forcing me to use one of these, that's probably the one. Yeah, no, I would say stay away from Tuesday, if you can. For Wednesday, we've got Mitch Keller at the Brewers, Eric Fetty versus the Diamondbacks,

Zach Davies at the Nationals, Drew Rasmussen at the Cubs, Chris Paddock at the Royals, Jordan Lyles at the Oakland A's, and Dane Dunning at the Mariners. Chris, are there any names that stand out for Wednesday streamers? Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I would want to use Mitch Keller. And I'm pretty discouraged with the way his season started.

But I think Jurassicson against the Cubs is pretty interesting. I think that's probably it. But yeah, Jurassicson. I think that is fair. Merrill Kelly is now up to 72% rostered. And a quick Twitter search tells me that, yes, there was an updated rotation for them. Bum Garner will pitch game one tomorrow.

On Tuesday, Tyler Gilbert will pitch the second game. Merrill Kelly will pitch on Wednesday. So if he's available, then he's our top streamer for Wednesday. So we lost a two-start Merrill Kelly. Ah, you're right. No good. That stinks. All right.

That's not going to help my Tao Wars team. Yeah, I've got them. You know, I tweeted this out late last night. I wound up in a tie in my home league, a points league with an 11-day scoring period with my dad. We tied. It's just, what are the chances of that? He had Marcel Lozuna hit a home run in the late game and, ah, it's just so frustrating. Anyway, I've got Merrill Kelly on that team, so we'll see what he does.

Team name Tuesday, let's wrap up here. This one's from Anthony, Tinder, Schwindler's and only fans. Swindlers. Swindlers. But I wanted to say like, schwindle, but. complete the whole name. Tinder, swindlers, and only fams.

Yeah. That's pretty good. Pretty good. This was from Sheldon, once wit, Bryce shy. Yep. Anytime,

it's apparently it's a reference to last Christmas. Anytime we get last Christmas on here, I'm about it. Next one. Oh, and twice shy. Stop me up.

Yeah. Is the other team name. From Sheldon. From Ian. Luke, I am your Padre. Yeah. I like that. From David, these are in remembrance of Taylor Hawkins,

who recently passed away drummer for the Ful Fighters, and before that, Alanis Morissette. So rest in peace. McHugh ought to know. It's good. Brad Hand in my pocket. Because I got Brad Hand in my pocket. Everlongoria.

Yep. O'Hernan to Fly. I like that one. Duval, my life. One of these Odette. There goes my Barrero. That's good. From Jordan.

It would be easier if it was a basketball podcast because then you could just do Tyler Hero. Right. But still, good. Yes. You know, make do with what you have. From Jordan, Tyquan Bo. Mm-hmm.

From Mark, these are for our country music fans out there. Way down yonder with Yusay Kikuchi. Sure. Friends in low places. Yep. Seth Beers and Sunshine. It's actually pronounced Lao Places. Oh, Friends in Laos Places.

Okay. Seth Beers and Sunshine. I was thinking whiskey for my friends, Seth Beer for my horses. There's probably another one that you could do that. You could probably do it, throw another name in there. Yeah. I mean, there's going to be lots of beer songs, I would imagine. Country music.

Connor Jolene. I like it. All right. From Derek. Connor I Joe. Very good. I think you sang that once earlier in the offseason, Chris.

I think so. Because of Connor Joe. From Nick, Quanner Joe. Yep. Like it? That's pretty much what the first two weeks

of the fantasy baseball season have been about. From Bernard, Say ya ain't so. Yep. Go to karaoke song. I'm about it. From Patrick,

say ya something I'm giving's up to you. I don't know what that... I know that's a song. I don't know what song that is. is. I'm saying something, I'm giving up on you.

Something like that. I probably put you. Yeah, that sounds right. This one's from Mike. We'll wrap here. Kwan Lake. Oh, you know.

It's pretty good. It's pretty bad. That's pretty good. It's so bad. It's almost good. Exactly what we think about John Sterling here on the podcast. For Scott and Chris,

I am Frank. Thank you all for listening and watching Fantasy Baseball today. We'll be back again tomorrow. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.